It will be recalled that the Vantour Report in its recommendations
for segregation drew a distinction between prisoners who constituted temporary
threats to the good order of the institution and those who represented
long-term threats. The report recommended that the first group be retained
in segregation units in their own institutions, and that the latter group
be sent to special segregation units to be established in the new maximum-security
institutions that had been or were being built in each region. Dr Vantour
(together with an architect) was subsequently asked to prepare a further
report, which sets out an operational model for the physical space and
programming requirements of what were to be called ‘special handling units.’4O
It is clear that none of the existing segregation facilities in maximum-seurity
institutions came close to meeting the physical requirements set out in
the draft Vantour- McReynolds Report; therefore, special handling units,
if they were to conform to the Vantour-McReynolds model, would require
new construction or at least extensive modifications of the existing facilities.41

Although the report was still only in draft form, the Department
of the Solicitor-General readily embraced the Vantour-McReynolds concept
and proceeded to establish two special handling units (initially referred
to as ‘federal adjustment centres’), one at the Correctional Development
Centre in Laval, Quebec, and the other at Millhaven Institution in Ontario,
notwithstanding that neither of the facilities met the physical requirements
of the Vantour-McReynolds model. This decision was heavily influenced
by the politics surrounding the passage of Bill C-51, the Criminal Law
Amendment Act, 1977,42 which abolished capital
punishment. As the trade-off for the legal abolition of the hangman’s
noose (by virtue of the exercise of the prerogative of mercy, no one had
been executed in Canada since 1962) Bill C-51 instituted life sentences
with a minimum parole eligibility date of twenty-five years for persons
conviicted of first-degree murder. The government, to demonstrate to critics
of abolition that it was concerned not to undermine the deterrent effect
of the law, announced its intention to confine those convicted of first-degree
murder in super- maximum security in the new special handling units. This
plan was quite contrary to the recommendations in the first Vantour Report,
which had stated that no one should be considered a dangerous prisoner
within the setting of the maximum-security penitentiary on the basis of
his offence in the community ‘until it has been established that he represents
a threat to institutional staff or other inmates or is an escape risk
even in maximum security.’43 Political considerations,
therefore, rather than correctional principles, played a large part in
the initial decision to establish Canada’s new prisons of isolation.

Although the special handling units at Millhaven and the
Correctional Development Centre were not the new facilities envisaged
by the Vantour- McReynolds model, that model has played and continues
to play a central role in establishing the theoretical framework of operation
for these units. Therefore, before looking at the reality faced by prisoners
confined in the new prisons of isolation, it is important to examine carefully
this theoretical framework in order to better understand the congruence
or dissonance between the rhetoric and that reality.